I mean shun, not the other S word. And I’m talking about shunning versus detachment.

Do you shun people who hurt you or who you have outgrown? Freeze them out because you can’t handle the drama they bring to your life?

Sounds healthy, right?

Not so much. I don’t think shunning is a healthy habit. I do think detachment is.

They’re the same thing though, aren’t they? Not even a little bit.

I’m bringing this up because it’s one of those things that keeps popping up. In the quest for personal development, I see people talking about shunning family and friends all the time. That’s not personal development because it shunning comes from a place of hurt and anger, not a place of peace and release.

Detachment, on the other hand, is about letting things go and not trying to control the outcome. It’s a fine line, but the intent and feelings are different.

Let me share a personal example from my life. I have a younger brother who I love very much, yet I hadn’t spoken to him or communicated with him in well over a year. I wasn’t shunning him—if he reached out to me, I would happily talk to him and invite him into my life. When I go to Colorado, I attempt to see him (which may or may not happen).

I have detached from him though. Emotionally he is incapable of showing up for his family. He decided a long time ago that he didn’t want relationships with us. For years I made an effort and the energy drain was exhausting. So I detached. Yes, I love him. But I can’t make him be someone he isn’t. He knows where to find me and that I’ll welcome him with open arms. But I will no longer chase his love. That is detachment.

Ironically, shortly after I first drafted this post, he texted me for my birthday. Maybe subconsciously he knew I was thinking about our relationship? I don’t know. We have a very pleasant text exchange and that will be it probably until the holidays. And that’s okay.

As we move into the holiday season, it’s a good time to think about this. Is there anyone you have shunned, when detaching is what you really meant to do?

I’ll admit it: I’m stubborn. That means I am very willing to ignore little problems until they become BIG problems. So it’s probably not a surprise I ignored the career burnout symptoms I was experiencing for, well, years*.

Career burnout is an epidemic for professional women. Every single time I go to a party or a networking event and say I help professional women figure out how to recover from career burnout — especially burnout from BS jobs** — women ask for advice. Sadly, I meet very few who feel fulfilled at work.

Do you have the most common career burnout symptoms that professional women experience?

You have become cynical:
You want to be positive, but you think everyone you work with is an idiot. You feel like you have to do it all if it’s going to be done right. You generally think everything you do is stupid and pointless. You don’t see how any of this stuff matters.

You are not as efficient as you once were:
It seems to take forever to do anything. There simply are not enough hours in the day, so you work more and more hours. You never seem to cross anything off your to-do list. And, most days, you don’t really care (see item #1). Ironically, you also spend a good amount of time on social media.

Exhaustion:
Despite the fact you sleep all weekend and never go out with friends anymore, you still feel exhausted all the time. You have a limited ability to handle anything — traffic, the wrong coffee order, your family. All you want to do is take a nap.

I had all of those symptoms, and more (including 15 extra pounds and stress-related health issues). But I didn’t want to admit I was suffering from career burnout because that meant I would need to do something about it. I was scared of losing my salary, scared of starting over, scared that whatever change I made wouldn’t fix the problem.

But ultimately the fear of waking up in 20 years feeling the same way was stronger than my desire to stay safe in my comfort zone. Shortly after I made the decision to find work that would fill me with purpose, I saw this Steve Jobs quote:

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

I had spent YEARS, not days, saying No. That realization gave me more resolve to make a change. I learned how to recover from burnout, and it was actually easier than I thought.

I should probably warn you that recovering from career burnout probably means leaving the career you’re in behind. If that is so terrifying that you can’t imagine it, then stop reading right now. But if in your heart you know that’s true and you are READY, then these first steps will get the ball rolling for you.

Get in touch with your personal values and impact in life. I believe you can’t figure out what will drive you if you don’t know what these things are.

Explore all of the things you love and all the things you’re good at. This was fun! I spent a few days just making lists. That alone made me happier.

Take all those things you love and are good at, mix and match them and see what comes up. What you will find is that patterns emerge and pretty quickly and new career will pop up.

Create an action plan. Change can’t happen if you don’t plan for it. Make a list of things you need to do for your new career and when you’re going to do it.

Get some help. Find a mentor or coach that can work you through the transition. There is so much going on, and there is a reason you’re burnt out. If you could do it alone, you would have. Asking for help is one of the most powerful things you can do to change your life.

I want to leave you with a question:

How many days have you said No, this is NOT what you would do if today were the last day of your life?

*Yea, it’s kind of embarrassing to admit I hung onto my pain for as long as I did. But if I’m going to help you in any way, I have to be completely honest.

**Read “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” by David Graeber. It talks about how many professionals believe what they do has no social importance and how that is slowly killing them. I think it is directly tied to career burnout.

On August 26, 1920, Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the proclamation granting American women the constitutional right to vote. What we often forget is the sacrifice women made to earn that right. These brave women endured beatings and torture, and likely things we don’t even know about. I honor them. In fact, today the entire nation honors them, although there are many people who don’t even know that.

Today is National Women’s Equality Day.

As I sit here thinking about it, I honestly have mixed emotions. Why? Because we just aren’t there yet. The vote did not bring equality.

Yes, we can vote and we have made strides in what we can (legally) do, be, or have. (As a side note, a friend of mine in her 70s told me when she was in her 30s and wanted to start establishing her own credit, her ONLY option was to beg for a department store credit card. The only way she could get it was for her father to co-sign. She couldn’t buy a house or car on her own at all —she had to have a husband or father do it. Forming her own business? Nope. A man had to get the loan. That is not my experience, and for that, I am so very grateful.)

I admire the women who tore down those barriers, and more. They are smart, strong, resourceful, and amazing (hmmm…like most women I know).

The problem is, my generation came along and decided we were there. The work was done.

But you know what? As long as we collectively do things like:

call women who speak up (or speak their minds) b!tches,

victim shame,

judge each other for not doing things exactly the way we would ourselves…

…we are not there.

As long as we refuse to figure out our OWN dreams and aspirations and choose to live unfulfilling lives, we are not there.

As long as we use our precious vote to allow admitted sexual predators to hold public office, we are not there. (It BOGGLES my mind that women endorse such horrific behavior.)

The good news is, in the last few years, many of us have woken up and realized all of this. The energy among women working together and lifting each other up is amazing. It fills my heart. I’m excited for the changes that are coming. I’m excited about seeing true equality in my life and knowing that my stepdaughter and my niece have brighter futures because of it.

Thank you to all the women (and men) who have never stopped working toward a better future for all of us. Thank you to the women (and men) who have joined the movement. Thank you to everyone who makes this world beautiful and safe for all. Happy Women’s Equality Day.

PS: this is about as political as I will ever get, but women’s equality is an issue about which I have very strong beliefs.

PPS: That’s my niece Maya with me at the Women’s March on Washington. She was so excited that day. Her generation is going to change our world.

Finding happiness within yourself, that is the dream for so many of us. In fact, finding true happiness in life is the ultimate goal. So why is it so hard? What is happiness? Only you can answer that question.

We get messages every day about what we’re supposed to want—a specific job, a specific car, a new purse, and perfect family. I always found those messages confusing because I didn’t want those things, or at least not the way I was told I should want them.

I also noticed that those messages were never about finding happiness within yourself.

Want to know how to get your happiness back? Chronic Happiness Success Secrets is the first step. Just click this picture to register today.

We’re all unique. I, personally, am an introvert. So to me happiness is NOT about going to parties and dancing all night long. I’m extremely happy sitting quietly on my patio with a dog in my lap.

Like I said, confusing. I have never seen a commercial about being happy where happiness is my version of it.

Finding happiness within yourself

You can find your own version of happiness, and the place to start is in Chronic Happiness Success Secrets, a course I designed for people, especially women, who have lost touch with their passions and purpose. Those who know there is something more to this life, but they can’t figure out how to find happiness again.

If that sounds like you, here is my trick for finding true happiness in daily life: do the simple daily rituals in this course. The secret to a wildly, chronically, happy life is that you actually control it.

Yes, you have control.

But you can’t wing it. That doesn’t work.

The system I teach in this course does. It’s simple once you start, and you will be amazed at that finding happiness within yourself is easy as 1, 2, 3.

This course is divided into three sections

Section 1: Values and Impact

Chronic happiness is about being true to who you are and what you stand for in this life.

In this section, you will define your values and create a personal impact statement (you’ll be amazed at how much fun it is… and that alone will increase your joy)

You’ll gain clarity on what kind of person you want to be and how you would like to serve others—the impact you want to have on this world (don’t worry—you don’t have to have a HUGE, global impact… it just has to be true to who you are). Once you figure this out, it will become your daily guide to measure if you are living a purposeful life in alignment with your values—and thus a life of intentional joy.

Why? When you are not living in alignment with your values and desired impact, you will be unhappy. It’s easy to get sidetracked if you have never written it down and you don’t refer back to it over and over again.

Once you have created your personal impact statement, use it as your private roadmap to gutsy happiness.

By the way, you can always refine it as you learn and evolve.

Section 2: Daily Rituals for Joy

Section 2 is the core of taking control of your life and finding your happiness. Every single successful person who is making a mark on the world has some sort of daily morning practice—I guarantee it. This is because how you start your day completely affects how the day unfolds. You get to control that!

There are many ways to develop a daily morning practice, and ultimately you will decide which of the rituals work best for you in your life. In this course, I present 8 different practices that, when done alone or together, have the power to radically transform your life (note: if you just had a heart attack at seeing EIGHT, know that you do not need to do ALL of them EVERY day. You’re going to experiment with them and choose the ones that work best for you and your journey.)

In each video, I will tell you why that particular ritual is included and how to do it.

Section 3: Protecting the Space

You’ve spent some time setting up rituals that WILL bring joy to your life. Now you have to protect them. Trust me, people will try to get you off your routine… and if you aren’t careful, you will help them.

Setting firm boundaries is one of the hardest things my clients do, and one of the most important. In this section, we’re going to look at your own boundaries and how to strengthen them.

This is the final piece to setting up the foundation for chronic happiness.

Part of finding happiness within yourself includes protecting the space you have created. You deserve it.

Finding true happiness in life is just $44.99

For only $44.99, today is the day you can start living a life of chronic happiness.

I speak and work with many amazing women — they’re smart, talented, and curious. They also feel that they are all wrong the way they are. Self-acceptance can be a bitch.

This is a feeling that hits home with me. In fact, working on it has been my biggest transformational journey.

I grew up in a home with an alcoholic mother who could not accept me for the person I was. There are many deep reasons for this, but I think the primary one is that I was a carbon copy of my grandmother, who suffered from extreme depression. I think my mother feared that was my path. That’s a guess. My mother passed away before we ever got to a place where we could have that conversation.

The reason I share that is because every day of my life, until I was about 22, in some way she told me I was wrong: I was fat, I wore the wrong clothes, I had the wrong hair, my voice was too soft (or loud, high pitched, or low pitched — she really hated my voice!). I was lazy, I was sloppy… it goes on and on.

That vision of myself stayed with me for a very long time (50 years to be exact). In fact, it still triggers me when someone comments on my appearance or voice, or any of those things. (I’m working on self-acceptance, but that stuff takes time!)

Self-Acceptance is an Inside Job

Honestly, I still don’t get much affirmation that I’m just fine the way I am. Why? Because I march to my own beat. I don’t fit in. I’m a little bit quirky, and even I don’t get my sense of humor half the time,?.

I share this because I think there are many, many women out there who experience the same thing.

Not fitting in is rough.

Or looking like you fit in when you know in your heart you know you don’t really.

It’s tough to live your happiest life possible when messages that you are fundamentally wrong bombard you every minute of every day.

So this is for every woman who feels like she is less than whatever she is supposed to be: You F-ing rock. You are so flipping cool I can barely handle it. You deserve all the good things that come your way. You are perfect exactly as you are.

Please don’t change. The world needs women like you.

Make yourself happy. Do what you want to do. And if those around you at work or home judge you for it, reach out for some support. There are a ton of us and together we are strong. If you want to work on your self-acceptance and would love some relentless support, join The Gutsy Happiness Project Facebook group… we’d be THRILLED to tell you exactly how much you rock.